Innovative learning in work teams: Analyzing cycles of knowledge creation in practice

Abstract

Innovative organizational learning is collaborative learning in work organizations that produces new solutions, procedures, or systemic transformations in organizational practices (Engeström, 1995). Studies of innovative organizational learning have thus far produced relatively general conceptual tools (e.g., Argyris & Schön, 1978; Senge, 1990). Although it is commonly acknowledged that innovative learning at work has a complex cyclic character (e.g., Dixon, 1994), there have been few detailed attempts to theorize about such cycles and to model their steps as they occur in learning processes in work teams.